Water is becoming an increasingly scarce and valuable commodity across the globe, which has led to an increase in legislation to conserve, curtail or limit water use. Consequently, there is an increasing need in the industry to develop fluid control systems (e.g., such as flush systems of toilet tanks, and other fluid handling or delivery systems) that improve fluid transfer precision and/or efficiency. As flush volumes are required to decrease, fluid flow characteristics must be enhanced to provide satisfactory flush performance.
Conventional ceramic manufacturing techniques do not provide the ability to maintain accurate dimensional control with small tolerances. The use of materials which can be fabricated with excellent dimensional control for those components where fluid flow characteristics must be carefully controlled could allow the use of less dimensionally well-controlled ceramic manufacturing technologies where toilet aesthetics, strength, and chemical wear durability are required.
A significant disadvantage of conventional rubber flappers are that they are “peeled back” to open the flush orifice. As such, water tends to flow into one side of the orifice of the flush valve more than the opposite side. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a flush valve assembly where a flapper does not block flow into the flush orifice when the flapper is lifted.